Today I found myself trying to install Sharepoint 2010 on my laptop running Windows 7 Enterprise. After reading all of the caveats about doing such a thing, I still needed to get this done. The post that I followed was from Microsoft: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869.aspx. Seemed pretty straight-forward: pre-configure, install prerequisites, blah, blah, blah. And it was all blah, blah, blah, until:

Error #1:

Failed to create the configuration database.
An exception of type System.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicException was thrown. Additional exception information: The data is invalid.

Well…great. I received this error after I had successfully installed Sharepoint 2010 and was just starting up the Sharepoint 2010 Configuration Wizard.

After searching around for awhile, I came across a post that said this error is related to permissions on the Sharepoint directory. The Network Service account needs Full Control permissions on it.

So, navigate to %commonprogramfiles%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14 and give the Network Service user Full Control on that folder and all related subfolders and files.

OK. Got that error out of the way. Now to rerun the Sharepoint 2010 Configuration Wizard. And…

BOOM!! Error #2:

What the heck?! This error proved to be more of a pain to diagnose. But again, Google to the rescue. A little background first though.

My computer is part of our domain here at the office. We have two wireless networks which do not talk to one another (for reasons not important). I found that this little error is related to the fact that the Configuration Wizard is trying to use my user credentials from AD to try and reach out to the Domain Controller for verification/authorization.

However, I was not on the network that had the Domain Controller on it. (My computer likes to randomly change wireless networks without telling me about it). So, all that I needed to do was to hop onto the wireless network with the Domain Controller and rerun the setup.

Woot!! Success!

I finished the Sharepoint Configuration Wizard, error free, and now have Sharepoint 2010 installed and working on my Windows 7 Laptop!